The Best Practices of Giving Employee Feedback

According to Gallup research, 80% of US workers who had received meaningful feedback report being fully engaged at work.

Whether you’re tasked with giving employees positive or negative feedback, you need to get it right. Clear and accurate communication is one of the most important tools for any employee to master. And as an HR professional, part of your job is to set the example for the rest of your organization.

With time and practice, effective feedback exchanges and constructive criticism can become an essential part of your company’s culture.

Let’s explore some employee feedback examples and best practices to improve engagement and upskilling across your team, as well as some bad habits to avoid.

What Is Constructive Criticism?

When it comes to employee feedback, the hero of your story is constructive criticism.

Constructive criticism is designed to build confidence and create a sense of positivity. It should be direct, actionable advice that covers not just what could be improved, but how. As a result, your employee may think of it more as an area for improvement, which they can take on board without feeling under attack. In turn, you might find that your bond is strengthened, rather than weakened.

A few of the benefits include:

• Context: Constructive criticism, when delivered well, should pair areas of improvement with employee successes. This helps your staff ‌avoid fixation on the negatives and see the big picture.
• Trust: Unfair, nitpicky, and hypercritical feedback is likely to create a sense of fear. If your employees trust you to deliver feedback in a clear, fair and positive way, they’ll know you want them to succeed. In turn, you’ll open the door to a more positive work culture where people truly grow into their roles.
• Action: If you equip them with a clear road map, your employees can find their way out of any rut. If you deliver criticism without this, your staff are far less likely to know how they can improve their performance—so how could you expect them to do so?

Destructive vs. Constructive Criticism

If constructive criticism is a hero of employee feedback practice, then destructive criticism is its evil twin. It focuses on the problem rather than the solution. It’s petty, narrow, undermining, personal and non-actionable. In short, it’s everything you don’t want to be for your team.

An example is simply saying “this work is poor”. Here, we have an example of a negative statement that doesn’t come with any advice on how to improve it. Then, there’s sarcastic, rude or personal comments, that we needn’t go into here. Suffice to say, destructive criticism lowers morale, reduces confidence and creates poor performance. And your staff would be right to shut you down on it.

Employee Feedback: What Not to Do

We’d like to think that destructive criticism is a rare occurrence. But there are plenty of other no-no’s too that you might not even be aware of.

After all, one of the most daunting tasks for any HR professional is giving negative feedback to underperforming employees. It’s easy for emotions to run high in these types of scenarios, so it’s important to handle yourself and your words properly. In other words, avoid these strategies:

1. Don’t Wait Until the Employee’s Annual Review

Waiting to offer constructive or corrective feedback is like waiting to tell a driver they’ve made a wrong turn. Bringing up an employee’s botched assignment from July during their annual performance review in December is not only pointless but also inefficient—it does not help them quickly improve nor does it raise the quality of your department’s overall work.

Instead, provide feedback as soon as possible (allowing time for a heated situation to cool if necessary); this gives the employee an opportunity to change their behavior or practice new skills before their performance creates permanent problems.

2. Don’t Put Things in Absolute Terms

It’s rarely true that someone “always” or “never” does something. Statements like, “She always does her assignments like that,” or “He can never do this quality check right” make employees feel undervalued. Using absolutes puts employees in a position where they stop listening to what you have to say and start thinking about examples to disprove you.

3. Don’t Offer a Compliment Sandwich

We’ve all experienced backhanded praise, and we’ve all heard of the “compliment sandwich” method. It starts something like this: “Your report was very well organized, but . . .”

However, leading with a compliment to soften the blow of negative feedback is such a common technique that it’s easy for most people to see coming, and that defeats the purpose. Even if you complete the sandwich with more praise at the end, it doesn’t make anyone feel any better and can muddy what you’re trying to communicate.

4. Don’t Criticize Things Beyond an Employee’s Control

An employee, no matter how talented or experienced, can only control certain aspects of their job. Be sure that your feedback focuses only on those elements over which an employee has control.

What’s one thing outside of an employee’s control? A task, duty, or goal that no one told them about. Perhaps they were assigned a task, but you never provided a hard deadline or the resources to achieve it. Punishing or criticizing employees for something of which they weren’t even aware is a quick way to send them scrambling for the door. Your goal is to help boost their performance—not undermine it.

5. Never Resort to Personal Attacks or Threats

Trust and respect go both ways. There’s never an excuse for personal attacks or threats of any kind. And don’t bring up personal circumstances such as divorce or financial issues to use them against employees. No matter how serious the error or incident, limit your comments to known facts, job responsibilities, company policies, and stated expectations. Period.

Employee Feedback: What to Do Instead

Following these employee feedback examples and best practices can help you effectively communicate your feedback, whether negative or positive. Here’s what you should try as you focus on improving the feedback exchange within your organization.

1. Offer Feedback Right Away

As mentioned above, there’s no reason to wait for the end of the year to either offer correction or compliment a hardworking employee. A top performer who receives no recognition may begin to feel unappreciated and look for work elsewhere.

When employees reach certain milestones and/or receive positive marks from clients or colleagues, express your appreciation to them. You can also take this recognition to the next level by notifying other departments of their achievements. This will boost employee morale and motivate them to continue to deliver good work.

2. Meet Face-to-Face

Sure, a quick email will get the message across quickly, but perhaps not as effectively. When sent digitally, the meaning and feeling behind your words can get lost in translation. The last thing you want is for your praise or your suggestions for improvement to sound cold and insincere, or for employees to misunderstand what you mean.

Make it a point to give feedback directly to your employees so you can communicate clearly the first time. Instead of giving feedback via a chat or email, face-to-face time during your regular one-on-ones creates more impact. Conveying your appreciation or your concerns face-to-face will help make a bigger impact that’ll foster better results.

3. Get Specific with Your Feedback

The bottom line: specific feedback is actionable feedback. Including specific details of what you appreciate about the employee’s work and how the employee can improve helps your people understand exactly what they’re doing well and what they can do to get even better.

When highlighting an area for improvement, give relevant, specific details. If an employee is struggling to provide relevant, timely sources in their research, for example, “Use better sources” isn’t going to be helpful. Try stating exactly what the problem is and a recommendation: “For your next assignment, incorporate more research from authoritative sources. These include .org, .edu, or .gov. sites.”

4. Make it a Two-Way Conversation

Feedback should always be a two-way exchange. Whenever you offer feedback to an employee, be sure it’s in the context of an open conversation. You’ll likely gain just as much from listening as from talking.

These open-ended questions can help you start a productive conversation:

• What are your thoughts?
• Which areas do you feel you performed well in?
• Are there any resources or kinds of support you need to help you succeed?

5. Elaborate on Their Impact

Employees want to know how their work contributes to the bigger picture. When you offer feedback, take the opportunity to connect the employee’s individual performance to a broader outcome like a stronger culture, greater customer satisfaction, or team and department goals.

For example, don’t just tell an employee that they need to communicate more with other teams on a new project. Instead, explain how everyone’s feedback and collaboration are necessary to properly achieve all aspects of a client’s strategic roadmap and to efficiently communicate any foreseeable issues to the client.

6. Share Good News

Want to boost morale? Conduct monthly meetings to share good news about the company and celebrate outstanding employee performance. It’s a great opportunity to express gratitude and bring departments together for special activities.

The Value of an Employee Feedback Survey

If you’re curious to know how your HR department is doing with employee feedback, you might consider sending out an employee feedback survey. A survey like this can help you understand how employees experience the organization, including how their peers and managers share their recognition and criticism. This is also a great way to gather feedback (instead of always giving feedback) and work on building a culture of effective and clear communication.